Open mike 03/03/2010

16 comments on “Open mike 03/03/2010 ”

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1. kaplan 1

   3 March 2010 at 8:46 am

   John Key:
   “The media do need to think a little bit about what is legitimate spending within the rules, even if they don’t like the rules … If someone breaks the rules they are fair game, if somebody complies with the rules, but the media doesn’t like that, that doesn’t make that person necessarily a bad person.”
   http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=10629589

   To paraphrase; ‘If you’se guys don’t like it you have to lump it and keep your traps shut.’
   I hope the Media give this the necessary treatment, though I’ll not hold my breath.
   • Pascal's bookie 1.1

     3 March 2010 at 9:01 am

     The Rules are not to be questioned.
     We make the Rules.
     Any Questions?

     Good.
2. prism 2

   3 March 2010 at 9:21 am

   I like The Golden Rule – Those that have the gold make the rules.

   An example from good old USA, a fillibustering 84 year old politician has blocked welfare help to needy people including newly unemployed workers.
   This dear old guy has got into a sinecure, and he was being blocked from standing again and, the theory is, blocked the legislation by yapping or something to get back at the Republican chairman who wouldn’t let him stand again. A fine example of total self-interest. Apparently he was elected on the basis of his work amongst and for the public – as a baseball player.

   Conclusion –
   1 Don’t elect people just because you know their face and they seem good guys or gals.
   2 The USA political system needs an overhaul, soon.
   3 Getting older doesn’t mean you are getting wiser.
   4 Politicians should not be able to stand again once they reach retiring age or if over 67 whichever comes first, and why –
   5 It is important to have representation coming into the government from middle aged people who have experience of life, and hopefully some training and experience in public administration, not having old geezers hanging on to positions of some status until they cark it.
   • BLiP 2.1

     3 March 2010 at 12:12 pm

     Hey Prism – Help keep me honest. I said charity of your choice, so do you have one in mind?

     🙂
     • prism 2.1.1

       9 March 2010 at 10:51 am

       Hi Blip I’ve been away. Will get back to you on that charity thing.
3. Peter 3

   3 March 2010 at 10:05 am

   Ah yes, the USA, land of the free and home of the brave.. Where nutters fly light aircraft into Federal buildings to express their dissatisfaction with their lot.

   Thank God I live here…
   • Brett Dale 3.1

     3 March 2010 at 4:30 pm

     Typical USA bashing from the left here.

     BTW have you ever visited the country?
     • Draco T Bastard 3.1.1

       3 March 2010 at 5:05 pm

       Have you checked out their real history? It isn’t pleasant reading and shows that most of the ideals and morals that they say they hold nothing more than slogans.
       • Brett Dale 3.1.1.1

         3 March 2010 at 7:39 pm

         You guys never stop it, do ya?
       • Brett Dale 3.1.1.2

         3 March 2010 at 7:39 pm

         You guys never stop it, do ya?
         • Draco T Bastard 3.1.1.2.1

           3 March 2010 at 10:15 pm

           Accepting reality? No.
     • prism 3.1.2

       9 March 2010 at 10:55 am

       Oh dear mustn’t criticise your masters Brett Dale. Have you ever thought about the country ie USA, read about it, tested its actions against its rhetoric? Why would I need to visit the country when it dominates all the media. Just hooning around the country as Jeremy wotsisname did on their motor show is visiting but wouldn’t inform them of much. But reading and thinking now that goes further than superficial kneejerk reactions.
4. marty mars 4

   3 March 2010 at 3:42 pm

   Sad to see this desecration of Sacred Maori Rock Art.

   http://mars2earth.blogspot.com/2010/03/german-tourist-desecrates-maori-rock.html

   We lost a lot of this taonga when the dams were built – how much known and hidden treasures will get lost if gerry-monster has his way and the parks start getting bulldozed.
5. lprent 5

   4 March 2010 at 1:33 am

   O: Moved to OpenMike from here.

   Hey, lprent, I actually like you. You are obviously very well meaning and talented in surprisingly wide-ranging number of fields. But have you noticed that none of your posts seem to attract much traffic. That’s because, despite being well-meaning, intelligent and hard-working, you are not actually that interesting. You are a basically nice human being who has gone a bit mad on a little bit of power in an odd little world. And the way in which you have exercised that power has made this site worse. You will not see that because, being a basically nice person, you value loyalty. So you will slap the backs of the bullies like Irishbill and the one dimensional children who are trying to be the Whaleoil of the left (BLiP, Millsy et al) and pretend to yourself that you are raising the tone of discourse. There are some who remember the early days of this site. When it was possible to make a joke at the expense of a person from any side of the spectrum. If the person was a dullard and the joke was funny, we all laughed and moved on. Not any more. I know you feel you must take yourselves so seriously because the very future of civilization rests with you. But maybe you are wrong.

   And as for putting yourself above the stars, that’s so not Grey Lynn of you.

   You obviously don’t read the site carefully enough *sigh*. Many of my posts are admin ones about the site, many others are notices, and many are purely informative. Those never excite too much comment, but frequently get quite good page views (which you can’t see). Those posts are the only reason I have a moderate posting frequency (150 out of 2254 last year).

   Apart from that I’m an erratic poster. I work rather a lot at the type of job that requires a *lot* of concentrated brain power and large amounts of time. The last thing I want to do is write a post that takes a couple of hours of work in the evenings. Besides which posts compete with time working on interesting (ie the stuff people won’t pay me for) code, reading, and a whole pile of voluntary work. Not to mention socializing with family and friends.

   Periodically I write a fairly in-depth post that is designed to hit people in their belief systems, and periodically someone annoys me so I roast them. Those typically get comments (and even more page views).

   Mostly I just moderate, comment, and make sure the site gets runs ok and has everything setup to recover from disasters. Those take less concentrated time than writing good posts. So I was the second equal highest commenter last year

   Moderation is done on behaviour and is essentially meant to make sure that the comments section doesn’t get arsine. I particularly look for behaviors that are designed to stifle debate and they’re pretty easy to track and exterminate. There are some useful measures I use to track the debate as a whole. In particular number of comments against the length of comments against the word length distributions in comments. All of those measures have been steadily tracking up since we instituted moderation at the start of 2008. Page views keep rising as well. It appears that the majority of our reader don’t agree with your assertion.

   If you look back at the unmoderated ‘debates’ in 2007 in the archives, you can see why. They just look ridiculous – people were just speaking without thinking about what they said. I think that you just have a very shallow appreciation of what this blog site is about. You don’t seem to understand much about running a high volume site.

   For instance you seem to equate comments with success. But page views are far more interesting because the vast majority of readers of this site don’t leave comments, or only a few periodically. As we’ve reduced the idiocy of the comment stream you seem to yearn for, our page views rise because more people read the comments. For that matter out average comments per week are going up, and overall so are the average sizes of comments.

   If you want that kind of moronic behaviour, then find another site. Frankly I don’t care about your opinion – you have little or no credibility. I’d say you’re just complaining that you don’t like an environment where you have to know what you’re talking about. You’d prefer shallow… There is a place for frivolity (and it appears around here frequently if you aren’t a troll), but it appears that you have a problem reaching it.

   In fact shallow really seems to be your only visible forte based on your complete inability to backup your assertions.
   • prism 5.1

     9 March 2010 at 10:59 am

     Wow lprent – while I have been away somebody appears to have tried thinking, and wrote to you. Pity it didn’t amount to more than a lot of verbiage. What you write is great stuff. I like it and of course my opinion counts for much!Cheers.
6. randal 6

   9 March 2010 at 11:14 am

   hey Lprent.
   It is your site so you can do what you like.
   Its only the tory stooges who think they can come here and impose their own standards of misbehaviour and false morality you have to watch out for.
   Its not theirs and they can go take a hike.
   and sometimes us proles like to pull their tails and give them a wake up call.
   and.
   you have to watch out for the cretins from trademeopinions and their ilk as well.
   otherwise this is one of the few sites where you get a hearing as long as you moderate your own beahviour.
   howzat?

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